Of dogs and cats

We wanted to get to Fradley by around ten this morning, and I had to visit the surgery briefly before we left. We’d had a late-ish night last night, after going to Sally’s agility class, which was good fun.

Amongst other challenges, Sally made her first attempts on the A-frame, a pair of sloping carpet covered boards leant against each other like giant playing cards; the dog has to run up one side and down the other. It took her just a couple of goes to get the hang of it, but matters were complicated by the fact that we were sitting nearby; on one occasion she saw us, thought “Look, Granny and Grandpa!” and flung herself into our laps.

Having 32 kilos (70 pounds in American) of sandy pawed Doberman cross arrive enthusiastically in your lap, tongue out ready for the administration of Frenchies, may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it got a good laugh from all bar Elanor, who was of necessity sternly admonitory.

I was sharing the back seat of the car with her on the way back; Sally was clearly well exercised, and spent much of the trip home lying up against me, at one point on her back, head in my lap and forepaws in the air.

Despite all this, we got away in good time today, and had a quick run up to Fradley. At Common Lock, a small black and white cat emerged from the bushes and mewed plaintively. There was no sign of Postman Pat, or any other likely home come to that, and we concluded that he must have become detached from his boat. A slip of paper in a holder in his collar leant support to this hypothesis, since it gave his address as “Inchmaree”.

We took him on board and carried on up to the mooring. A call to the phone number on the paper didn’t get through, so we gave him some milk to be going on with, and I went to the shop to ask if he was known, and if necessary to buy cat food. It turned out, however, that he was a local character, belonging to one of the boats on the permanent moorings, and inclined to stroll around the woodlands all day.

The advice was “Turn him loose, he’ll find his way home.” This proved harder to do than to say, since Simba (there’s a novel name) clearly thought that we would make a very adequate substitute for his present staff, and hung around the boat expressing his displeasure, at one point getting back into the well deck and banging on the bow doors to be let in.

Presumably, he considered Morrisons Skimmed UHT to be better than what he got on Inchmaree.

We’ve dumped a huge amount of rubbish and recycling here, and plan a quiet night before an early start tomorrow. We had planned to go just beyond Rugeley, but we’ve exchanged texts with Autumn Years; they are going to be at Wolseley Bridge tomorrow night, so we’ll push on to there for the evening.